Double trouble

The sometime loading bay, sometime short term fee parking bay

This story has been in the Barnet Times who Mr Mustard helps with technical PCN matters. A traffic warden will make a mistake from time to time, that is fine, it is how you deal with it that matters.

Quick story:

1. PCN issued (in error as it happens)

2. Motorist writes in expecting immediate cancellation & you never know, an apology, a bottle of wine, flowers, a box of chocolates ...something.

3. Council write back and say he should have paid to park.

4. Motorist writes back as he can't believe the second error.

5. Council write again and tell him to go away and wait until the Notice to Owner is issued, which will not be for a month.

6. Motorist contacts local newspaper which checks with Mr Mustard & then asks the council to comment.

7. PCN gets cancelled very soon thereafter.

Firstly what clues did the traffic warden (who only issued their first PCN on 6 August 2018 so is inexperienced and probably under-trained and/or not up to the job) miss? The obvious one is the sign on the pole, the one that is at a jaunty angle at the back of the car. The second one is that the bay is wide enough for a lorry as this is a part time loading bay so probably not a bay in which you have to pay. The third one is the transverse line at the end of the bay marking where the pay bay starts (although for clarity the two bays should be separated by a short stretch of yellow line). 

Why did it go wrong at the informal challenge stage? (informal just means a challenge in response to a PCN issued on street). This Freedom of Information response holds the answers.

Informal challenges are responded to by NSL Ltd. Their office deal with these is in Dingwall. Where the heck is Dingwall, Mr Mustard hears you cry. Dingwall is where the red pin is.

Dingwall is nearer to the Faroe Islands than it is to Finchley. Scots are great travellers but Mr Mustard doesn't suppose that any of the NSL employees in that office have been on familiarisation trips to Finchley. What tools do the employees have at their disposal? They have the photographs taken by the traffic wardens, eight of them in this case including the recommended one of the car and sign in the same shot but sadly the standard close up shot of the sign was of the wrong sign. The clues were still in the photos as the sign at the back of the car was on a thin grey pole and the pay by phone sign was mounted on a thick black pole.

Google street view would have answered the layout question.

The council's map based Traffic Management Order would also have been indicative of there being two types of bay.

The pink bay is the loading & free parking bay. The green dotted line marks the pay bay.

The suspicion is that NSL reject, on behalf of the council, pretty much all informal challenges without really troubling to read them (another blog is coming with an example) and it is only at the next stage when representations are made in response to the Notice to Owner that a council officer, who works within the borough and so is more likely to live in and travel about the borough, can then apply any local knowledge he/she has to the situation. In this case when the motorist wrote back to point out rejection was wrong instead of a different NSL person looking to see if the motorist might just be right, as he lives nearby, the contact was rejected out of hand. That was unhelpful & dim. It also doesn't help that the council have apparently not given NSL any guidance or policies.

Let's look at Mr Mustard's statistics for 2018. So far in 2018 he has fought 103 Barnet PCNs (+ 80 outside the borough).

He has lost 17 times so that is how many times the council were correct to fight to the end. (These include cases where people came to Mr Mustard with no available argument but were already at the stage of having missed the discount period so they may as well fight to the end as sometimes the council give up anyway).

On just 12 occasions the council, probably decided by NSL, have accepted informal challenges.

On 15 occasions the council, probably itself, have accepted formal representations. Mr Mustard usually puts in the same arguments at both stages so that means informal challenges were wrongly rejected 15 times.

On 3 occasions the council decided not to bother once a referral had been made by witness statement to the county court after a document was lost.

On 23 occasions Mr Mustard took his rejected arguments to the independent adjudicators at London Tribunals and the council threw in the towel rather than produce the evidence and have the matter decided upon it. That means good representations were rejected 23 times as otherwise surely the council would have wanted the matter argued out?

On 36 occasions an adjudicator agreed with Mr Mustard's arguments, or the council made procedural errors. Those are another 36 cases that should have seen the PCN cancelled at an earlier stage. It is also 36 fees of £30 paid to the tribunal by Barnet Council that they could have avoided.

The reason that so many informal challenges are rejected is because experience has shown councils, not just Barnet, that most people don't realise you can use the same argument at all three rounds of the process and they give up the fight. That, combined with apathy, a shortage of time & a lack of knowledge of parking law and PCN processes tilts the playing field towards the council. Mr Mustard grabs it and pushes it firmly back the other way and is always ready to trust his judgment and fight to the very end & in 2018 he has been shown to be right 83% of the time or to put it another way, 5 times out of 6.

Whatever you do, if you are sure of your ground, don't give in. Stick to the timetable and make firm but polite challenges at the relevant times. If your situation is patently absurd then do email the local paper and/or go to your local councillor. The council hate bad publicity and it is in their interests to cancel your PCN at the earliest possible stage if they aren't going to make any money from it. It can though be hard sometimes to get them to see the error of their ways.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet Council spout nonsense

Mr Mustard reads a lot of tribunal decisions, usually about 300 a month (sat in bed with his ipad and a cup of tea in the morning, bliss). He missed this one though and a vigilant reader brought it to his attention.

Adjudicators, being trained lawyers of at least 3 years call (qualified working time) tend to employ intelligent & indirect criticism. The most critical phrase Mr Mustard had seen up until now was 'This is an astounding decision' which was in relation to car drivers being expected to check the internet to see if there was a rugby match taking place that day rather than being notified by signs. Mr Mustard simply hasn't seen such a direct slap around the face with a wet cod nor such a warning to never say something again nor the use of the word 'nonsense' which leaves so little doubt about the concern for legality and procedural fairness in the mind of the adjudicator.

What worries Mr Mustard is that this is unlikely to be a one off event. Other people may have taken the council at their word, which we all should be able to do, but which Mr Mustard never accepts without verification, and paid the PCN for a car which was not theirs, an absolute miscarriage of justice.

Mr Mustard has noticed over the years that Barnet Council are more stubborn than most councils when it comes to accepting that cloning has taken place and it does happen a lot. When Mr Mustard gets a cloning case it is often the case that the car will incur penalties in more than one borough and drive away without paying for fuel. Other local authorities have proven themselves to be impartial and objective when it comes to accepting that cloning has taken place, not to Barnet Council, who insist motorists go to the tribunal even when faced with evidence from the DVLA, police and other authorities who have cancelled their PCNs. Mr Mustard doesn't know why they are stubborn in this area.

The above extract of a tribunal decision (number 2170150147 for experts who want to know) contains an important principle, the council have to prove that it is your vehicle. The registration plate does not make it your vehicle, just a vehicle bearing the number plate that has been allocated to a particular metal box. Best produce everything to the tribunal though that shows it isn't, starting with a 'spot the difference' set of photographs and prove you have told the police or DVLA of the cloning. When you tell the police they stick the number plates into their vehicles of interest database and keep stopping cars with that plate until they catch the rogue one.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Saracens Ltd - charitable donations

It used to be the case that companies had to declare within their published Accounts how much they had disbursed in charitable donations but that legal requirement ceased 5 years ago. Mr Mustard has though gone back through the Accounts of Saracens Ltd, the company which the rugby team income goes through, and found the following amounts.

Years to June

The trend was downhill

In 2014 the charitable contributions were 0.08% of turnover. That doesn't seem like much.

For money going the other way the Accounts of the Saracens Sports Foundation for 2017 reveal this information.

Charging £24,000 rent p.a. to the charity, now that does look a bit keen. Surely they should be given space at the ground free of charge?

Mr Mustard wonders if councillors knew any of this when they voted in favour of the funding for the West Stand & to answer his own question he doubts they really got into the details, just saw the word 'charity' & assumed that the rugby club were giving bundles of money to the charity arm, when that doesn't appear to be the case.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Greenacre Walk - St Albans

G Webber is a genius

That problem of council sub-contractors hiding their telephone number from you (and insisting you write or use a web-form) has been solved by G Webber (Mr Mustard does not know them).

G Webber asked the following question of Barnet Council

 and received the following response

Calls to a number starting 03 are the same as to numbers starting 01 or 02.

If you have an organisation that works for a council that you want to telephone, this is how you now get the number. It will take up to 20 working days for a response.

I expect someone will now ask for the telephone number of the NSL parking back office in Dingwall (not Mr Mustard as he is usually highlighting their shortcomings to council parking management and cuts out the middleman).

G Webber - you are a genius.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

This evening Mr Mustard was delighted to receive an email from G Webber.

I’m glad you found my FOI request useful! I read your blog regularly. I’m a Golders Green resident and have successfully had four Barnet PCNs issued to my car cancelled as unfounded, and one FPN for ‘fly-tipping’ (issued when either I or my partner left our flat’s rubbish on the street exactly where the council had told us to!) dropped in recent years. Always very impressed by your stamina on behalf of others.

Best wishes

G Webber

Does a new rugby stand generate measurable social benefits?

The Policy & Resources Committee were offered the above as being the social benefits for residents which would come from lending £22.9m to Saracens Copthall LLP. You could buy an awful of social benefits directly for that. It is, in Mr Mustard's opinion, a blind, a complete red herring to say that Saracens must have a posh new west stand otherwise those social benefits won't appear.

The below is what the Saracens Sports Foundation, a registered charity, linked but legally separate from commercial ventures with 'Saracens' in the name, have generated as income in the last 8 years.

Cast your minds back to 2013 when Saracens moved to Copthall Stadium and the new, state-of-the-art East Stand was built. Can you show Mr Mustard the surge in charitable activities that occurred at that time? No you can't, because it didn't happen. Why would it happen if a second stand was built? It wouldn't.

The charitable foundation does great works but it doesn't need the new West Stand to do them in, there is already the East Stand after all, and many of the other activities are in the community itself.

The community of Barnet, all 394,400 of us, do not need a new rugby stand. 3053 rugby fans will like it, but it isn't the role of a local authority to fund private rugby clubs backed by multi-millionaires. They funded the East Stand & they aren't broke, worth at least £500m between them. They just need to cash in a few shares or sell a tiny portion of their property portfolios, a 100ft yacht or a private plane.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Saracens - alternatives to the reckless loan

When the proposal to lend £23.9m to Saracens Ltd (later changed to Saracens Copthall LLP) was considered in July 2018 'alternative options' was a section in the committee papers, as it always is.

The meeting was given a shockingly short set of options by the Deputy Chief Executive, Cath Shaw, either yes or no to making the loan. According to Mr Reasonable she is paid £151,433 a year. You would think that someone paid that much would be able to find some other intelligent or creative alternatives. Of course the leader of the council wants this loan to go through, as he cast his deciding vote in favour of the loan when the committee vote was tied 5-5 in October 2018 and so if she wants to progress in her career, maybe to CEO one day, it is best not to rock the boat. Mr Mustard, or you, will have to come up with some alternatives.

1. Let multi-millionaires fund the loan.

The joke is that the two main men behind Saracens are both fabulously wealthy (which is fine by Mr Mustard who is happy with his lot) and could find this sort of money down the back of the sofa in order to fund their sporting plaything if they so chose. A quick trawl of the internet finds these sort of numbers to give you a scale of their wealth which puts them into the Sunday Times top 1000 rich list.




This is how Mr Mustard thinks the stadium should be funded.

2. Lend just a small portion of the money, say £1m

A 100% loan is risky for one lender to provide & so a consortium of lenders should be found. Other parties who will benefit could provide part of the loan. The Saracens Sports Foundation is active across North London (a dozen more local authorities to ask there) in Hertfordshire (approach St Albans City Council, Hertfordshire County Council etc) in Luton (who have a town council). The club itself has at least 10,000 fans as the average attendance is 9,400 and they don't all go to every game. Why aren't they being offered the chance to invest? Mr Mustard knows two keen fans. Both of them could easily stump £2,290 each and get a seat named after them & some other benefits.

Middlesex University could jointly procure the stand and stump up a capital sum which reflects its percentage share of the usage and then pay zero rent.

3. Pay for the social benefits

The following social benefits are what we are going to get from lending to Saracens Copthall LLP to build a new stand apparently.



A new community garden will be lovely but could be built regardless of a new stand.

What is the cost of the educational opportunities which are being sought? as the council could simply pay for them. They should also be putting the requirement out to tender (it seems to be taken for granted that Saracens alone can provide these). Providing these new social offerings doesn't need a new stand, there is a perfectly good East stand there already. There is plenty of green space around for exercise programmes which again the new stand isn't needed for. There are also plenty of other sports grounds within the borough which could be used and the council itself is building two brand new leisure centres. Can you guess where one of them is?
 

yes, it's at Copthall!

It looks to have all the facilities you could desire to help improve people's fitness and wellbeing.

Thus we see that the council plan to lend out £22.9m without the public knowing the value of social benefits they will garner as a result (cue frantic work by some poor employee of Barnet Council who now has to go and try and put a figure to this).

4. Charge a decent interest rate

Mr Mustard thinks that given the risk the loan rate of 6% is too generous. He did the collect out on a finance company in the City of London which made loans to customers who normal banks wouldn't touch. They charged 10% interest. They went bust and it was one of Mr Mustard's toughest ever assignments to get all the money back, which he didn't manage as it wasn't possible.

You may have others alternative ideas which Mr Mustard may not have thought of. Do enter them in the comment box below.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard